Dr. Toni

Lessons in Letting Go

Posted on by Dr. Toni


It happened to me again.  I was in the market shopping.  The aisle was a bit tight with two other people trying to pass at the same time.  I turned quickly to get out of the way and out of nowhere a sharp pain grabbed my hip.  I stumbled, almost falling, but caught myself on one of the shopping carts.

You may have had a similar the experience.  It happens sometimes, usually without warning.  Arthritis seems to grab at a joint in my hips or knees.  There’s a sharp pain and it’s as though for a moment I lose control of my body.  I know it’s not uncommon.  I often hear people my age talking about their bodies just not doing what they want it to any longer.  That’s exactly what happens to me.

One of the unsettling things about aging is the loss of control.  As I begin to experience these little interruptions that catch me off guard, like a sharp hip pain that causes me to stumble, I pay more attention to those who experience far greater losses in mobility.  If I allow my mind to wonder, I recall the crippling effects of arthritis evident in my mother and the years my father was bed-ridden with Parkinson’s.  I try not to think too much about those things because it leads me to wonder:  how long before I am next?

Yet, when I’m reminded of the increasing limitations in my own body, my experience of loss of control, I try to keep focused on this loss as a natural process.  I hope to ease into it.  I also remind myself that this physical process parallels the process of spiritual growth and maturity.

When one becomes more attuned to the spiritual dimension of life, experiences of self-fulfillment, peace, and wholeness are common.  In these early stages, spirituality is often equated with personal well being.  But that’s just the starting point for nurturing the spiritual dimension of life.  (And yes, it is an essential place to start.)  With maturity comes the growth is letting go of self, self-fulfillment, and self-satisfaction to allow for the experience union and communion with that which we experience as greater than ourselves:  the universe, the Divine Mystery, the heart of transcendence.  This maturity requires us to let go of control over self and, in a sense, to allow self to melt away in moments of communion with something more than we can easily describe.

The process may sound odd and mysterious or perhaps even absurd.  Yet, we experience this process each evening when we sleep.  In order to fall asleep, we must let go of all control over our activities and responsibilities, allow our minds to clear and our bodies to relax, and in doing so, we let go of awareness to sleep and to rest.  This pattern is part of the natural cycle.

The pattern of maturity that leads us to let go and not have control is a basic pattern in life.  That pattern is found in the rhythm of sleeping and waking, of growing in spirituality so that we release egoic preoccupation to experience communion with the Holy One, and in the physical changes we experience in aging.  Just as we cannot prevent the sun from rising and setting or the seasons from changing summer to autumn, so too this cycle of losing control is part of what it is to be human.  It’s something to simply embrace as a unique dimension of what it is to be alive.

While it may seem trite to some, perhaps the simple wisdom in Twelve Step programs says it best:  when we want to hold onto the illusion of control, we just need to, “let go and let God.”  The control we think we have over life is nothing more than a passing illusion.

I’d honestly prefer not to have arthritis.  The stiffness and occasional pain is frustrating.  I don’t like how it slows me down.  But slowing down….that’s at the heart of living a life of balance rooted in the spiritual dimension.  Keeping this in mind, perhaps the aches and pains of growing older can be a way to refocus on our need to let go and be open to the deeper Mystery which sustains all life.

Photo credit:  CCO License Source: pixabay.com

© 2017, emerging by Lou Kavar, Ph.D.. All rights reserved.

From Ram Dass – Still Here

Posted on by Dr. Toni

As our roles shift in older age, so does our sense of community, and feelings of isolation often accompany elder life. When I spoke about this to Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Master, he said that despite the information age and advances in technology, which allow us to communicate with each other so rapidly, “one human being can’t be with another human being [through technology]. A father can’t be with a son, a mother with a daughter, a father with a daughter, a friend with a friend.” It’s harder and harder for human beings to be together, even though they can transmit information to more and more people all the time.

Although relationships change in all stages of life, it often seems harder to find new connections to replace the ones we lose as we age. This effort to stave off loneliness and to replace missing connections can sometimes take extreme forms, as in a case I read about in which a Japanese man hired a surrogate couple with a baby to visit his elderly parents because he didn’t have time. The old people spent the day pretending that these strangers were their actual family, talking about their “grandchild’s” health, how much the baby had grown, and so on. Before the surrogate couple left, kisses were exchanged and promises to visit again soon, and they were paid by the son an equivalent of $1,150 for their time and thespian abilities.

"Now and Then" photographed by Betina La Plante

“Now and Then” photographed by Betina La Plante

Caring for someone else is one way to combat loneliness. In response to this need, some older people have taken it upon themselves to be of service. Laura Huxley created Project Caress, a public space located in a shopping center where mothers and fathers can leave their babies while they shop. With a registered child-car professional in attendance, older people volunteer to come in to hold and cuddle the babies. The babies and the elders alike benefit from the contact. Although we may yearn to be quieter as we age, human beings have an inborn need for social contact that must be honored if we are not to suffer, and part of our conscious-aging curriculum must include finding ways to satisfy this yearning. We long to reassure ourselves that other hearts exist; to affirm our own existence through the presence of others. An older couple I know – he’s a psychiatrist, she’s a meditation teacher – have a big, beautiful home, where they raised a large family. After the children moved away and started families of their own, my friends were left rattling around in their big house, until one day they said, “This is a waste! Here we are in this wonderful house – why don’t we fix up the basement and move down there, and give one of our kids and his family the upper floor?” Their son and his family really benefitted by having the house, and my friends enjoyed the cross-generational companionship.

Through a strange set of circumstances, another friend of mine found herself  starting a family she never intended to have. At the age of 69, she became the sole caregiver for a six-year old child. Here was a woman traveling the world to give seminars, writing books, being an intellectual, who suddenly had her life “interrupted” by a child she could not turn away. For the first few years, she bemoaned her fate, but slowly this changed, and she and the child are doing fine. She even admits that her life is better for this unexpected change of plan.

Even though, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us, we can not be together through technology, cyberspace can afford us a different way of maintaining connection in older age. No longer bounded by geography, we can meet in the brave new world of the Internet and spend time as companions in virtual reality. A woman speaking on National Public Radio recently reported how she’d used her computer and her internet contacts with people all around the country to get through her depression and loneliness after the death of her husband. A year later, she’s become the one who is counseling and supporting other recent widows in a chat group on the web. A friend of mine who is approaching seventy is teaching her still older next-door neighbor, a shut-in, how to surf the internet. My friend, who loves gardens, shares (among other things) a spirited international internet chat group on gardening. I foresee that computers will play an increasingly important role in engaging elders like me in educational and social participation, relieving us of the hassle of moving our arthritis-ridden, aging bodies around so much.

These sort of creative solutions to how we want to live as we get older are often more available than we think. Unfortunately, many of us are too caught up in the cult of independence to see these possibilities; either we don’t wish to be a burden on others, or we don’t wish to be burdened by others. Either way, we find ourselves more isolated than we need to be. In speaking with hundreds of elderly people, I’ve noticed a distant pattern of loneliness among those vaunting their own independence. We become Eleanor Rigbys, waiting at the windows of life. The “achievement” of living on one’s own is diminished by the sense of being ignored or left behind. This diminishment can become a barrier standing between our egos and the rest of the world, increasingly solid and hard to cross. Whether through shame over our own aging, or through fear of dependency, we should be vigilant about this tendency to isolate ourselves as we get older. To offset it, we might seek out community centers and other meeting places where peers congregate, or consider alternative living arrangements such as assisted-living centers, spiritual communities, and multiple-age communities set up specifically for bringing people of all generations together.

– Excerpt from Still Here by Ram Dass

Integrative Health on Conscious Aging

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Have you ever wondered how you will like to age and have you ever imagined or even remotely thought about how you would like to die? I know these are not easy questions to answer but nevertheless are thought provoking because one day we will all be old and will be nearing death. When I look at my parents, I wonder what they think about their aging process and what lessons I can learn from them. Especially at a time when cosmetic surgery, botox and winkle reducing creams and the like seem to be the norm, these question become even more important.

Aging is a personal experience and we can learn a lot by spending time with people who are near to the end of human life span. Conversations around sharing your own experiences and understanding the perspective of an older aging person can provide much perspective and insight. Conscious aging means to ‘move on’ and confronting your own death. There are several myths around aging for instance, most think that retirement has a negative connotation associated with it. The popular belief is that retirement leads to identity crisis and that older adults have little contact with the younger generation. You will be surprised to know that research suggests that younger people are more lonely than older people and according to the theory of Gerotranscendence (The term Gerotranscendence comes from the words “gero” (“old age” in Greek) and “transcendence” (“to climb over” in Latin) ) by Lars Tornstam, a researcher in this area, Gerotranscendence is a developmental stage that occurs when an individual who is living into very old age shifts their perspective “…from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction.”

Isn’t that just fascinating! To know that old age can have such profound meaning is so gratifying. Being raised as a Hindu, I am aware that the religious scriptures define fifty two life stages and out of these, ten are the most important. These stages are called Samskaras. Some of the most commonly known Samskaras are that of childhood, of boyhood, of manhood and of old age and death. Similar to the Tornstam theory of Gerotranscendence, in the two last stages of life as described in Hindu scriptures (namely Vanaprastha and Sannyasa), a person withdraws himself from all worldly activities, retires in the forest and prepares himself for taking Sannyasa. As a Sannyasin, he or she renounces the world and leads a life of study and meditation. It’s interesting to see such similarity between recent western research and eastern view of purpose or path of life for an aging person. We become more and more like the Zen Buddhist as we age.

Tornstom conducted qualitative interviews of 50 participants between the ages of 52 and 97 years and identified three dimensions of change – The Cosmic Dimension, The Self Dimension and The Dimension of Social and Personal Relations. According to the cosmic dimension of gerotranscendence , a person transcends borders between the past and present and sometimes interprets his/ her childhood in a new reconciling way.An elder may report that they experience feelings of being a child, a young person, an adult and an older adult all in one moment. This view of time allows them to re-evaluate old events to gain new perspectives, and provides opportunities to right old wrongs. They begin to view death as a natural part of the life process; they appear to fear death less than those who are younger.

The dimension of self relates to self confrontation and through self discovery, one finds hidden aspects of their self – both the good and the bad. During this time, one may find removing the self from the center of one’s universe on one hand and on the other, if there is a lack of self confidence, a struggle to establish self-confidence that feels appropriate may happen. The care of the body continues but the obsession with it surely ends. These elders become less self-occupied and a shift occurs from egoism to altruism. Gerotranscendent elders remove their “masks” because they no longer feel the need to play their old roles; they can now be themselves. These individuals find themselves simply accepting the mysteries of life, acknowledging they can’t understand everything. When gerotranscendent older adults reflect back on their lives, they realize that the pieces of their life’s jigsaw puzzle really do form a wholeness.

According to the dimension of social and personal relationships, the meaning and the importance of relationship changes. These elders become more selective and less interested in superficial relationships and find an increasing need for periods of solitude. As they age, they often become more selective in their choices of social and other activities; they avoid social interactions they judge to be unnecessary. Gerotranscendent seniors report a decreased interest in material things, viewing too many possessions as burdensome.They express a greater need for “alone time” for thought and meditation, referred to as positive solitude. They also have an urge to abandon rules, while also understanding their necessity at times. They have ‘everyday wisdom’ meaning they show reluctance to superficially separating the right from the wrong and thus holding judgments and giving advice. They have an increased tolerance and broadmindedness.

I hope this blog helps you to understanding the aging process and how to age consciously. This may also help you to relate to what your older family members may be going through and will assist you to understand that process better.

Dr. Joyce: Almost a Million Twitter Followers and 71 Years Young

Posted on by Dr. Toni

Winnie Sun ,

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

An interview with

Dr. Joyce Knudsen

Dr. Joyce Knudsen, PhD, is an internationally published author of ten books, a successful entrepreneur, the CEO of The ImageMaker, Inc. Communications Group, and a a social media maven with a massive social network that is closing in on one million people.

She is also the youngest 71-year old I know.

Afflicted in childhood with a vision impediment that prohibits her from driving, Knudsen overcame the limitations put upon her and launched a company that helps others overcome theirs. She helps clients understand and improve the image they project through their appearance, communication style, and behavior. On a deeper level, she helps clients address the self-esteem issues that hold them back: “I think of failure, according to other people’s standards, as a starting point for my path toward even bigger success,” she said, and she coaches her clients to do the same.

Knudsen launched her home-based image consulting business in 1985. She obtained her doctorate at age 54 and started building her social media empire in 2009. These days, she works around-the-clock to keep up with her international clientele and substantial social network. Between Skype calls and social engagements, Knudsen squeezes in time to work on her eleventh book, entitled “Refusing to Quit: True Stories of Women Over 60.” She seems perfectly suited as one of its subjects.

Knudsen strives to make a difference in at least one person’s life every day. She once helped a six-month coma survivor regain her confidence after a traumatic accident, and that client now owns her own business. She also helped another client achieve her goal of becoming the President of the American Veterinarian Association. “If I don’t [help someone] by the time I’m falling asleep…I reach out on social media. I love the interaction,” she said.

The positivity Knudsen espouses is an inspiration to older women who are fast approaching traditional retirement age and will continue to work, either by necessity or by choice. According to a 2014 Transamerica Retirement Survey, more than half (52%) of working women plan to continue working after they retire. Three out of five women over the age of 65 cannot afford to cover their basic needs, which forces them to stay in or return to the workforce indefinitely.

Why are older women so strapped for cash? It seems to come down to one simple fact: women live longer but earn just 78% of what men earn, according to a 2014 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The lingering effects of a recession combined with threats of Social Security benefits cuts make retirement planning difficult, but the truth is, the advantages of working past 60 may exceed the supposed downsides.

Financially, working past the traditional retirement age makes sense. The longer you can hold on to your employer-paid contributions to your 401(k), the better. Continuing to work past 60 means you’re living off a paycheck instead of drawing from your savings, allowing you to continue feeding your retirement funds. Healthinsurance provided through work can be cheaper than Medicare and provide you with more comprehensive coverage.

But even more than that, science shows that working longer keeps you younger. Ceasing work can be detrimental to your health. Retirement often means participating less in both mental and physical activities, which means both the mind and body begin to deteriorate.

Retirement can also lead to a drop in self-esteem since so many people tie self-worth to their jobs. Combine that with fewer personal interactions with other people on a day-to-day basis, and you have a recipe for loneliness and depression.

Dr. Joyce certainly is not the type of person who lets age limit her goals or allows modern culture to dictate what older generations are capable of doing. She firmly believes that age does not determine a person’s worth in the job market, and workforce studies back her conviction. According to CareerBuilder.com, 54 percent of employers hired workers ages 60+ in 2014, up from 48 percent in 2013. A 2015 AARP study makes the case that mature workers ages 50+ are highly valuable within many organizations — particularly in industries such as healthcare or energy that require highly skilled workers or those with unique skill sets. These older workers scored high marks for listening, writing and communication skills, leadership qualities, and a high level of employee engagement.

To women who may feel inferior because they must work well into their 60s and 70s out of financial necessity, Knudsen would encourage them to look at what might appear to be failure as an opportunity instead. “You can’t think [working past traditional retirement age] is a bad thing, but a step towards success,” she said. “You have to push yourself to keep going, be persistent, and believe in yourself.”

It should come as no surprise that Knudsen doesn’t ever want to stop working. She dismisses the idea of retirement completely. “No, it’s a silly question,” she says. “I have so much fun, and I hope I live long enough to do it all. I’m going to be 100. I want to be one of those centenarians.”

Knudsen’s story is evidence that a thriving work life past 60 is not only possible, but also rewarding. She is one of five entrepreneurs profiled in my free eBook “The Modern Entrepreneur, Secrets to Building a Thriving Business from Home,” which I wrote in collaboration with personal finance community MoneyTips.com. The study found that 97% of successful entrepreneurs who work from home truly enjoy it, making it an attractive option for workers over 60 who still want or need to work.

Winnie Sun is the Managing Director and Founding Partner of Sun Group Wealth Partners, a trusted financial consulting firm providing financial planning services to small business owners, senior executives, celebrities, tech elite, and established families throughout the West Coast. She has appeared on CNBC Closing Bell, Fox Business News, Huff Post LIVE, and is host of the The Renegade Millionaire show, and founder of the TheMillennialStudy.com. Follow her isms on Twitter: @sungroupwp.

Winnie Sun is a registered representative with, and securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Sun Group Wealth Partners, a registered investment advisor and a separate entity from LPL Financial.

IONS on Aging Consciously

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Want to practice conscious aging?

The Institute of Noetic Sciences, a member of the Conscious Aging Alliance, has identified nine practices to help people engage in life fully:

1. Reflect on your worldview, beliefs, stereotypes, and assumptions. How might they be limiting you or holding you back?

2. Reframe Your Inner Talk. Take note of your critical self-talk… reframe these internal messages as more positive and self-compassionate.

3. Shift Your Perspective away from the popular media and the weapons of “mass distraction” that shape the dominant culture’s view of aging. Find opportunities to pause and ask yourself where you find joy, goodness, and connections.

4. Practice Mindful Attention. Bring your attention toward greater self-awareness. What do you need to surrender or leave behind? How can you conserve your energy for what has heart and meaning? What still needs healing or forgiveness?

5. Set Intentions. Ask yourself, “What matters most? What values do I want to adhere to?”

6. Build New Habits. Challenge your brain with new learnings, explore new activities…or do something new every day.

7. Find Guidance. Connecting with others offers a way of living into new patterns and behaviors.

8. Move from I to We. Altruism and compassion born of shared destiny, rather than duty or obligation, can emerge and add joy and purpose to your actions.

9. Death Makes Life Possible. As people grow older, as they come to face their own mortality, they can bring greater awareness to the transformative process that allows a deeper experience of their life journey.

Live it forward

I agree, growing older shouldn’t mean an end to our growth. As philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” Sounds like a fine future to look forward to!